Hand kneading wet doughs benefits from experience. I also make use of dough scrapers, like a simple flexible one such as shown, for example, at http://www.bakedeco.com/detail.asp?id=705&catid=194. I also use a bit of bench flour on my hands and lightly dust the dough mass with a light scattering of bench flour to make it easier to handle the dough. But I don't go overboard and lower the hydration of the dough with an excessive use of bench flour that hasn't gone through the fermentation process and might be likely to burn and impart a bitter taste during baking. In other words, I don't cheat. I would rather lower the hydration at the outset.

Whether 70% hydration is low enough will have to await the next iteration. One of the things that I have noticed and that has long intrigued me is that it almost always seems to be the bread guys who like to use the super high hydrations, not the pizza guys. As examples of the former, I might mention not only Brian Spangler but also Peter Reinhart, Jim Lahey, Dan Lepard, Rose Beranbaum, and a host of other well known and highly regarded bread dough cookbook authors and posters at breadmaking forums and websites. They are also the ones who use autolyse, preferments (like poolish), sourdough starters, and stretch and folds. Guys like Tom Lehmann from the pizza side might talk about some of these methods from time to time but they ordinarily don't use them. The highest hydration that I can recall from Tom Lehmann is 65%, the upper limit of his NY style dough formulation. Even then, I can't specifically recall his ever telling anyone to actually use that hydration value. I enjoy reading about the bread dough methods but I try to hold them at bay as much as possible when I make pizza dough.

I have been experimenting with 16 hour poolish (starter 3%, flour (100%), water (100%) total poolish 25%). 1 1/2 hour bulk rise and 1 1/2 hour ball rise. Overall hydration of 68%. In the final formula I used honey at 4.7%. I think I got this from the Jerry Mac recipe. I've never used honey in any recipe before so I was curious to see the result. The dough seemed very wet and required considerable bench flour, too much in my opinion. I did not factor the honey into the hydration calculation? I used Giuisto's 00. Overall impression was good, though not yet better as compared to Ischia and Neapolitan style 24 hour bulk rise. I also tried this with KASL and Giustio's mixed and seemed to get better results. Both were cooked in WFO at approx. 700-750.

I believe that the poolish method could create a better overall pizza. I would love to experiment more as to flour type, protein. omitting the honey, possibly adding a malted barley??

Any thoughts?, I haven't seen much reported with a poolish based upon a starter as opposed to IDY.

Can you clarify whether your starter (3%) and poolish (25%) are with respect to the total formula flour, total formula water, or total dough weight? A while back, in response to an inquiry from member foodblogger, I came up with a possible JerryMac dough formulation based on using a natural starter in preferment (poolish) quantity. In my example, the starter was not combined with more flour and water to form the poolish. The entire poolish was natural starter. I contemplated an 18+ hour room fermentation, but that was just speculation on my part since the actual time would depend on the character and makeup of the starter/poolish itself. I posted my proposal at Reply 22 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6515.msg58619.html#msg58619. I did not try the formulation myself and it does not appear that foodblogger did either.

With respect to the honey, it does in fact contain water. It is about 17% water. However, the water in the honey shouldn't throw off the formula hydration all that much (in my proposal mentioned above, it increased the formula hydration by a bit less than 1%). The 4.7% honey figure you mentioned is what JerryMac uses with his dough formulation. The alternative to the honey in JerryMac's formulation is barley malt syrup. The barley malt syrup is nondiastatic and, hence, serves mainly as a sweetener and to increase the finished crust coloration. If using honey or nondiastatic barley malt syrup results in an overly hydrated and difficult to handle dough, I would just reduce the formula hydration by a few percent. I have used honey in pizza doughs on many occasions, and I like its rheological effects and performance (honey naturally includes simple sugars that yeast needs as food).

I am not familiar with the Giusto "00" flour you mentioned but if it is unmalted, you might consider adding diastatic malt, either in dry or liquid form, in order to increase the amylase enzyme performance to extract more natural sugars from the flour. The diastatic malt should be added to the final mix. It is usually a percent of the total formula flour.

In general, I agree that using a preferment such as a poolish is a good way of improving the quality of a pizza crust. However, there are few professionals who use that method. I believe that it it the unpredictability of room temperatures that deters professionals from using preferments. Artisans like a Brian Spangler may be able to deal with this problem but if unskilled low-cost labor, such as kids, is used to make the dough, then problems are likely to abound.

Peter, If I recall the numbers correctly I used 320g flour 320 g water and 9.6g starter for the poolish. Mixed and let sit for 16 hours. Then added the balance of the flour 1280g total, so additional: 960g flour, 550g water and 28.8g starter, 1.75% sea salt; 4.7% honey.

Can you help clarify what the difference in crust characteristics would be between; honey, sugar, diastatic malt and using a higher protein flour such as KASL?

I am looking for more of an artisan type of pizza rather than a NY style. I will have to look when I get home as to whether the Giusto's 00 is malted.

To complete the picture, can you tell me what the composition of your starter is in terms of the percent flour and percent water, by weight? Usually, those are the amounts used for feeding/maintaining the starter. Also, can you tell me how you calculate the amount of sea salt and honey? That is, is it as a percent of the 1280 grams of flour or as a percent of the total flour, including the flour used in the starter? In the final analysis, it may not matter what the precise numbers are, but I like to see the entire picture.

If you would like to have an artisan pizza product, I am not sure that you need to use any sugar, whether table sugar (sucrose) or honey. Sugar is not an essential ingredient, and most artisan dough products do not call for it. For example, as noted recently in this thread, Brian Spangler does not use any sugar in any form in his dough. However, if you have been having problems with crust coloration (too light), then the use of sugar in some form, or the use of diastatic malt, might be appropriate. All sugars in a dough serve pretty much the same purposes, namely, to feed the yeast during fermentation, to add sweetness to the finished crust (if used at high enough levels to be detected on the palate), and to establish sufficient residual sugars in the dough at the time of baking to contribute to crust coloration. Some sugars do this better and faster than others because they have more simple sugars, which are the only sugars that yeast uses as food. There are other sugars, called complex and very complex sugars, that have to be transformed to simple sugars before they can be used as food for the yeast. This can take a fair amount of time, usually many hours. As an example, sucrose (table sugar) is one of those sugars that has to go through such a time-consuming transformation. By contrast, honey includes 31% glucose and 38% fructose, which are both simple sugars, and 1% sucrose. So, for a short fermentation period, such as the last few hours in your case, honey might be a better choice than ordinary table sugar. Honey also contains more minerals than table sugar that can used as nutrients by the yeast and, depending on the type and color of the honey, it can also contribute to the flavor and coloration of the finished crust. There are also enzymes in honey that can help break down complex sugars in flour to simple sugars. Ordinarily, honey and table sugar can be used on an equal-weight basis provided that the formula water is reduced to reflect the 17% water content of the honey. For a fairly recent example of where I used honey in lieu of sugar in a short fermentation situation, see Reply 22 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,7821.msg68374.html#msg68374.

Diastatic malt is not a sugar. When added to the flour, either by the miller or by a baker, it provides additional amylase enzyme activity by acting on the damaged starch in the flour to increase the levels of sugars in the dough. Diastatic malt can also be added to flours that are unmalted. Most domestic flours are malted, although there are a few that are not. If you are having crust coloration problems as noted above and do not want to use table sugar or honey, using diastatic malt should result in higher sugar levels in the dough for all or most of the purposes noted above. For a good discussion on malts (diastatic and nodiastatic) in doughs, see this article: http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,8308.msg71658/topicseen.html#msg71658.

Using KASL in your dough formulation should result in increased chewiness in the finished crust, a bit more crust color and a bit more crust flavor. This is primarily due to the higher protein content of the KASL. You might also get a higher crust volume to the extent that the higher gluten levels in the KASL are adequately developed to better retain the gases of fermentation. Brian Spangler tried using high gluten flours for his dough formulation but found the crusts to be too chewy. That led him to use a weaker protein/gluten flour for his doughs.

As usual you are an incredible wealth of information. I'm not sure of the percentage weight of the starter. I am using Bill's method of using 3/4 cup of flour and 1/2 cup of water per feeding. I believe he indicates that equals around 54% flour and 46% water, but I have never weighed them. I calculated the honey and salt on the basis of the total flour exclusive of the starter. Should I be calculating the flour and water amounts of the starter into the formula as well?

I am not suggesting my crust coloration was bad, in fact it was pretty good. I am just more curious as to what factors play into it and to what extent. When you look at the extreme such as Pizzeria Mozza which has that dark, crunch crust (not what I'm looking for) and move down the scale to pictures of Chris Bianco's pizza they appear to have a much nicer degree of coloration to the crust. Brian Spangler's pizza seems more bread like than Bianco's. I am guessing Bianco uses a higher protein flour. I am just trying to figure out what variables play into it. Your information is very helpful in that regard. I have noticed that a lower temp oven temperature more in the 550-650 range and additional time allows for more crust color as well. I recall seeing Bianco reach into his oven, which I cannot do at the 750+ temps I am used to cooking at.

I will be working on a couple large batch's for July 4th (we have lots of people coming over) and will try to post some results. I am going to do some more experimenting. Also, in reading thru the links you posted on Brian Spangler, one indicated that after his long poolish rise he did a 24 cold rise as well. Interesting, perhaps I will try this as well. I am going to eliminate the honey/sugar from my testing.

My modus operandi is to start with a "total formula" that represents all of the ingredients and their total quantities, and to carve out the "preferment" portion. The "preferment" and the remaining ingredients are the "final mix". Ingredients like salt, sugar, oil, etc., are given with respect to the total formula flour. Otherwise, you will come up short on the amounts of those ingredients. This will usually not be a big issue if the amount of preferment is small, but if it is large, say, 40% of the total dough weight, then you might end up with insufficient salt, sugar, oil, etc.

The article on Brian Spangler's early dough work discussed his use of a combination of room temperature fermentation and a long cold fermentation. That combination perhaps chewed up too much time. With only a 24-hour room temperature fermentation, I suspect it is much easier to prepare and manage the dough to fit the hours of operation of his business.

Combining KABF and KAAP will produce a blend that has a protein content between the 12.7% of the KABF and the 11.7% of the KAAP. The precise value will depend on the amounts of the two flours used in the blend. You can use member November's Mixed Mass Percentage Calculator at http://foodsim.unclesalmon.com/ to come up with different possible scenarios.

Pizza RusticaI wanted to pass on my experience with Giusto's Ultimate Performer Flour.I read in one of your post's that you were looking for a 00 high gluten flour.The Giusto's Ultimate Performer flour has a finer texture than any of the American flours I have used.The crust that I achieve from this flour is crispy with a tender interior.I think this could be classified as 00 high gluten flour.I cook my pizza in a altered gas oven that reaches 690 degrees my pies cook in about 4 minutes.I have been to Pizzeria Bianco and his pizza cooks in about 4 minutes.Chow,sabino

Wonderful looking pie. The flour purchased from Giusto's is marked 00. It is unbleached wheat flour. No additional markings on it. I am not sure of the protein level. Can you tell me if you're using a poolish and what procedure you are using. The cook time for PB confirms my suspicion that some of the crust color is from a long slow bake.

The 50 pounds of flour you mentioned converts to 50 x 16 x 28.35 = 22,680 grams. At 0.012%, the IDY comes to 2.7216 grams. That is equivalent to 0.096 ounces, or 0.90 t. So, it is just a bit more than 7/8 teaspoon IDY, which is easy enough to measure out. The major challenge is how do you disperse about 7/8 teaspoon of IDY within 50 pounds of flour?

A dough that ferments for almost 24 hours at room temperature is perhaps equivalent to several days of cold fermentation. Hence, a crust made from the 24-hour room-temperature fermented dough should have more and better crust flavors and a better texture than a 24-hour cold fermented dough. I think you can make a cold fermented dough that will yield a finished crust with characteristics similar to a crust made from a 24-hour room-temperature fermented dough, but I think you would have to use less yeast in the cold fermented dough, colder water, and over a week of cold fermentation, maybe even longer. I base this conclusion on the work I did on long, cold fermented doughs at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,3985.0.html.

Allow me to add also that this small percentage of IDY varies a lot when you consider the fermentation temperature. This 0.012% is for fermentation at 80-85F if I recall that correctly from your initial posts.

Because my room-temp. is 75 F, I increased the IDY to 0.02% to achieve a 24 hours fermentation. I just guessed a slightly more percentage and I hope it's really "slightly"

I'm just worried about the dough hydration cuz this is the only thing I forgot to reduce.

Saad,

I think you will be fairly close, but you should watch the dough if you are in a position to do so to assess whether the 0.02% quantity of IDY is in the ballpark. I think you can see why it is not common for professionals to use long room-temperature fermentations. For business purposes, I would think that you would need some kind of apparatus or a special room dedicated to the fermentation process that is temperature controlled. That makes me wonder how Brian Spangler ferments his doughs for Apizza Scholls. As I previously noted, I could have used my MR-138 ThermoKool unit but that would have taken the fun and excitement out of the exercise .

I will admit that the math when working with very small quantities of yeast can get a bit tricky, especially since we aren't used to working with very small fractions, like 1/128 teaspoon. In fact, the expanded dough calculating tool can't handle some of the numbers because of their small size and the way the tool rounds out numbers. For example, in the opening post, the yeast quantity is given as follows:

IDY (0.012%): 0.03 g | 0 oz | 0 lbs | 0.01 tsp | 0 tbsp

As you can see, the ounce measurement doesn't even register. In the above example, to get more precise numbers than the tool can produce, I brought out my calculator and took 0.012% of 268.87 grams (the weight of the formula flour), which is 0.0322644 grams, and converted that to 0.00138 ounces, or 0.0107105 teaspoons. That is a bit more than one half of a 1/64-teaspoon "drop" mini-measuring spoon. Without such a mini-measuring spoon, I would have had to take a 1/8-teaspoon measuring spoon of IDY and divided it into eight roughly equal "piles" and then divided one of those "piles" into roughly half.

I suspect that people who are not adept or comfortable with math at this level are not likely to try the dough formulation I posted. The alternative is to get a set of mini-measuring spoons or use the 1/8-teaspoon division method described above. As you can see, working with 50 pounds of flour is a lot easier than working with 269 grams of flour.

It was the perfect dough, but I damaged the pie while rotating it inside the oven

It took me awhile to figure out most of my problems with the dough. For months, each time I make a dough, it tears as I stretch it. When I increase hydration to make it more extensible, it also tears. When I decrease hydration, it becomes too elastic and resistant to stretching. Then it hit me to think how perfect are the doughs I make with low gluten flours, what's the difference. So I started studying my mixing technique. I looked at many videos of people used the KA mixer as mine is techincally the same but a different brand "Kenwood". It turns out that the KA's low speed is much faster than the one I have. So my conclusion was that my dough was always underkneaded. Now I need to increase the mixer's speed and time of kneading but this would also mean the dough will pick up in temperature resulting in the yeast getting activated regardless of how cold is the water that I used. The only solution that I thought of was using much less yeast so it won't matter much what temp the dough was exiting the mixer and let the dough ferment in room-temp so I could have it ready in shorter time than if I would cold-ferment it.

At least, now I know what my problem was all along with high-gluten flours. Following other's instructions and timings of mixing was a mistake without considering other variables but knowing how the look and feel of a well kneaded dough is definitely the way to go from now on for me.

Here is what I tried yesterday. I used about .065% IDY because I couldn't measure any less than that (1/8 t and ran my finger across the top to level it). I mixed for a little less than normal (10 minutes on #2) at 3pm and by this morning (18 hours) Ambient temps range from 71-77F. I think it was already over fermented (with a little bubble on the top). That is not to say it didn't make a very nice baguette this morning.

I can't help but wonder is there just a lot of wild yeast floating around our kitchens? I think I recall the last time I put out flour and water out in my kitchen, it was bubbling and seemingly alive after just one day.

Measuring out very small amounts of yeast is, at best, an imperfect exercise. Measuring spoons have different shapes and are made of different materials with different manufacturing methods and yeast can be fresh (i.e, bought recently) or old (I have used yeast that is several years old) and can be stored under varying environments, including the freezer. And no two people are likely to measure out yeast volumetrically in the identical fashion. You do the best you can and hope for the best. Even with mini-measuring spoons, which are a big help, there is still a fair amount of eye-balling involved, especially when you are trying to split one of the mini-measuring spoons into another fraction (e.g., from 1/64 t. to 1/128 t.). And you don't dare sneeze.